


spin tracks and space walks

by ApprenticeofDoyle



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Angst, Explicit Inexcusable Language, F/M, Fluff, Gratuitous use of the side-eye, Hurt/Comfort, I swear, Implied abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jamie MacDonald: The Bro of Downing Street, Language, Malcolm's a casanova, May/December Relationship, Post-"Death In Heaven", Romance, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Sorry dudes, Spoilers for DW Series 8, Temper Tantrums, The Doctor's an emotionally constipated cinnamon roll, WIP, Workplace Relationship, satsoufflé, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-05-13 07:29:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5700058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApprenticeofDoyle/pseuds/ApprenticeofDoyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU (Post DW S8): The Doctor leaves, and she stays.</p><p><i>“And, to my surprise, I received what can only be called the most enigmatic, vague, fucking unorthodox of emails this morning, telling me I’d be a fucking </i> foetus-cock <i> not to hire you. Why? I don’t fucking know, apparently you’re capable of initiative, drive, and immaculate conception all at the same time. What did you do for U.N.I.T., exactly, that makes you such an invaluable employee?” </i></p><p>Or: Clara Oswald becomes Malcolm Tucker's new PA, and one day, the Doctor comes back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. setting the record

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, so excited to be starting another work-- long time fan of DW, new fan of The Thick of It, tore through the archive for all the crossover fics I could find and decided to give it a go myself. Really pumped to be writing a new one, and I hope you guys like it! Feel free to critique my shit Briticisms, too, by all means, God knows ill adept I am at them. All comments are welcome.
> 
> Usual disclaimer, all rights go to BBC, and I'm unbeta'd as always.

_chapter one_

 

The Doctor leaves, and she stays. He flies away again, but this time without the promise that he’ll come back. Clara’s heart has long since cracked in two, but watching that blue box fade into nothing one last time fills her with a bleak, profound ache. Every bone in her body is tired, exhausted by sorrow ( _his eyes as he went were the worst of it, emptied blue, his smile tight with something like pain)_ and she knows it can’t be tolerated for long.

The idea of going back to normal, even her normal, tastes like battery acid at the base of her throat. It’s why she lied to him. She can’t go back to Coal Hill (he won’t be there for morning chats), she can't go back to her flat (not with his old t-shirts strewn about, not with his toothbrush still sitting on her bathroom sink), and she can’t run away to space and planets and danger (because he won’t be here on Earth, waiting for her to come home).

She has to do something, quite fast, or it will swallow her, and he wouldn’t want that. Neither would _he_. The Doctor will come back, maybe, one day, and she won’t have him see her now: broken pieces barely held together by pride and stubbornness.

Clara Oswald doesn’t get to run away from her problems, because she fixes them.

So later that day, she drops off her letter of resignation at Coal Hill, and later that week, hears about a job opening in the Department of Communications, of all places she could possibly consider. Her call of interest is met with both boredom and tired warning, telling her the job is difficult and quite possibly horrible, and perhaps that’s the change of pace she’s looking for.

 ^    ^    ^

Two days after that, she’s wearing her best interview clothes (a fetching but solid number, professional plum, with platforms for a futile attempt at added height), and her name is being called.

“Right,” she whispers under her breath, cold sweat breaking out at her palms. She subtly wipes them on her skirt as she reaches for her purse, and follows the weary intern who called her out. Eyes track her back, sharp with competition and study, and she feels anxiety paint her cheeks pink. There’s a surprising amount of people up for this job, all of them looking more politically inclined (read: possibly rabid) than her, and she wonders vaguely if this position could be something over her head.

They reach an impressively drab door that reads “ _Malcolm Tucker, Director of Communications”_ and she straightens, shoulders squaring.

It doesn’t quite matter at this point. She’s going to get this job.

The intern pauses with his hand on the doorknob, and eyes her plum ensemble with equal parts sympathy and bawdiness. She raises a stern eyebrow at both, and gets a shrug that almost says ‘what can you do’ in return.

“Good luck,” he says dryly, his expression draining to well-honed wariness, and he opens the door like a man carrying souls across the river Styx.

Immediately, choice words fall through her mind in a meteor shower of disbelief. Shock, horror, and the fire of anger paralyze her in stinging, sharp electric currents. The man at the desk before her-- _impossible, impossible--_ doesn’t look up to greet her, and says promptly to the stack of papers before him, “Hurry the fuck up, I haven’t got all fucking day. Start with your name, thanks.”

 _His hair’s got brown in it,_ she thinks first, ludicrously, followed quickly by, _impossible_ , _impossible,_ what _did he just say to me, how could he be here,_  and _he’s younger, how could he be younger?_

The door closes with an ominous _thoom_ behind her, shattering her panicked reverie. The man before her looks up, and his painfully familiar-- _just_ familiar-- face is sour with a put-upon boredom. He sees her expression and, instantly, his own darkens like a thundercloud.

“What the fuck is that look for? I asked for your name, not your fucking internet history.”

_Get it together, Oswald._

“Clara,” she manages, through sheer force of will. “Clara Oswald.”

“Right,” the man drawls, crushingly unimpressed, and the storm slowly passes. “Go ahead and take a bloody seat, already.” His eyes cast down to his papers again, sharp brow drawing low. His desk, messy as it is, is remarkably opulent, as is the office surrounding it.

She fails to keep her eyes anywhere but on him. Same nose, same criminal bloody eyebrows, same-- same _eyes,_ same color, white nova blue...

But-- no. She looks harder, and his eyes... they weigh heavy in a very different way.

“Forgive me,” she says, rallying before she loses all sense of professionalism. “You look very much like someone I know, it threw me for a moment.”

“That so?” he replies, voice dead with false interest. “I imagine you’ve seen someone a bit like me on the telly once or twice, consoling the incapable fuck-twats that compose our nation’s media.”

“No, no, an- an old friend,” she says, trying to quash her rising hackles at his blatant sarcasm and, well, unexpected language. “To be honest, I haven’t the slightest clue who you are.”

His brow rises and (across the universe, evil cowers in terror) eyes like chips of ice meet hers. “My name’s on the fucking door, sweetheart,” he says, like she’s incredibly thick, but something in his harrowing gaze goes keen with thought. “Right above the name of my title in this cock’s wipe of a department.”

“I know you’re the boss,” she responds honestly, feeling the outlook of this interview dwindle considerably in her falling stomach.   _And sweetheart? Really?_ “That’s all I really need to know.”

“The boss,” he echoes blankly, and his eyes take a faintly manic glint that’s, among many things, disturbingly familiar. “Oh aye, I’m the boss. Unofficial head of Number 10, Director of Communications, all that shit. More importantly, Ms. Oswald, is that I’m our faff-arse of a Prime Minister’s fucking _sugar daddy._ Everything he does is monitored by me and _cleaned up_ by me, because he’s an incapable twat who doesn’t know fucking up from fucking down. And you’re sitting here, telling me that you applied to this job-- a job as my _personal assistant--_ and you have no fucking clue who I am?”

Swallowing, Clara says firmly, “Yes.”

He searches her face intently, quite as though he’s looking for deception. The look seems to rake down her spine like teeth. She holds his gaze despite the gooseflesh climbing down her neck, and when he finds only truth, he leans back in his chair, the sudden viciousness in his gaze reeling back.

“Well, fuck me if that wouldn’t win you the fucking job.”

Clara blinks at him.

“Sir?”

He rolls his eyes in an unexpected show of levity. “Oh for the love of God, don’t call me sir. My name’s Malcolm, not Jesus H. Do you have any damn idea how hard it is to find someone for this department who won’t crap their fucking nappies at the sound of my name? Half of the stupid cunts that came in to interview today couldn’t fucking contain themselves, it’s like I’m fucking Mick Jagger.” He sighs, kneading a temple with a free hand while flipping through the papers on his desk with the other. “It’s a shame, as well, because you’re so goddamn _un_ qualified for this line of work, aren’t you?”

Clara’s eyes go wide. He doesn’t notice and continues, voice still weatherman light.

“I mean, seriously? A secondary school teacher? This isn’t the place to dip your toes in the water, it’s fucking Shark Week every goddamn day and I need someone who can survive getting rattled round the political cage, d’you understand? It's Dante’s ninth fucking circle here and unless you’re packing enough heat, you’ll turn into a frozen fucking husk. Look, your resumé’s goddamn immaculate and normally that’s all I’d give a shit about, but this job requires more than knowing how to work a fucking word processor, yeah? There’s nothing here that gives me any particular reason at all to give you the time of day-”

By this point, Clara’s heart has fallen from her chest cavity and onto her diaphragm, making every breath ache. Once, she would have gotten frothing mad and stomped out at the affront to her previous profession, but now...

“-except for,” Malcolm says, voice slowing, and her eyes fly up. “One...little...thing.”

Each word is pronounced by taps of a single slender finger against her resumé.

“U.N.I.T.,” he says, and his gaze locks on hers with an intensity that freezes time solid. “It says here that periodically, for the last couple of years, you’ve officially consulted for U.N.I.T. in what I can only assume an _unofficial_ capacity.”

_Oh, god._

“And, to my surprise, I received what can only be called the most enigmatic, vague, fucking unorthodox of emails this morning, telling me I’d be a fucking _foetus-cock_ not to hire you. Why? I don’t fucking know, apparently you’re capable of initiative, drive, and immaculate conception all at the same time. What did you do for U.N.I.T., exactly, that makes you such an invaluable employee?”

She’s so having a word with Osgood. “It’s classified. But if you’re the man you say you are, you know that.”

The corner of Malcolm’s mouth twitches. “Yeah, classified, of course. Well, Ms. Oswald, what’s it classified _as?”_

At first, Clara wants to reply “none of your damn business”, but decides that quite possibly, this is her _deux ex machina._

“Damage control,” she says instead, and his eyebrows lift. “What I did for U.N.I.T.. It was negotiation and crisis management.”

“You...consulted. You consulted negotiation and crisis management?” His voice gains that conversational lightness again, and really, it’s the most suspicious thing she’s ever heard. He leans forward across his desk towards her, features hawkish and intent. “Forgive the hell out of me, but I’m wondering-- how did a English teacher get involved with U.N.I.T., then? As much as I agree that the public faces of our fine government are a bunch of fucking school children, that doesn’t explain how you, Ms. Oswald, fell in with one of the most _genuinely_ secretive branches of the British democracy.”

Being the Doctor’s best friend won’t be a very good answer, but it can help her come up with one. Travelling has given her excellent on-her-feet thinking skills. She smiles, calm stretching across her face, and he blinks at her in something like surprise.

“I’m very good at making friends, Malcolm.”

His back collides with his desk chair again, expression turning calculating.

“I’m sure you are,” he says, appraising. “Fine then. If you can handle _“damage control”_ at  U.N.I.T., you could certainly handle the garden variety torrential cock-ups that happen here.” His voice goes darker, heavier, and the blue sunrise of his eyes goes cruel and sharp. “But there are certain things about this job, Ms. Oswald, that require more than a contract and a pulse from its employee. As my PA, you don’t work for the Department. You work for _me._ Your arse is _mine_. My job requires me to dissimulate, prevaricate, and _erect_ whatever truths and untruths I need to keep the Party off the block, and I need someone who is not only prepared to assist me, but willing to navigate the intricacies of political waters as more than an useless assistant, a'right? I need someone to trust-- fucking _implicitly_ , unreservedly-- to get the work done, and withstand every mothercunting shitstorm that’s thrown at us, no matter what you _think,_ no matter what you _stand for._ This is a job where you take the orders I give you, and fucking carry them out, because that’s what I need you to do. I don’t want some limp-wristed, soft-hearted nanny with twelve cats and a moral compass, I _need_ someone who can take it-- take the job, take the shitty pay and the stress and the existential crises, and most importantly, take the shit from _me_.”  

Clara Oswald. Taking orders, no questions asked, when she couldn’t do it for an alien who saved galaxies. She knows better, for the sake of professionalism, not to answer right away, but just as much, she knows this is something she must chew on. This volatile man in front of her, with his language and bruising, heavy eyes, he’s more serious that anyone she’s possibly ever met. He’s offering a job that’s going to take more than her time. It's quite possible it could take her marrow and reshape it, to whatever suited end, and leave behind nothing of Clara, English teacher. Impossible Girl.

As his eyes bore into hers, she wonders if that’s what she wants. A life that will consume her, a life that will take the part of her saved for space and running and doing everything she’s told not to and lock it away. She would be working for a man who will spin the country in his hands, with power and efficiency and cool brutality. _How different can it be,_ she thinks. _Running around beneath a mad man, patching up the country-- how different is it from running around the universe beneath an alien mad man_ (a man with just as much volatility, just as much power, just as much fire beneath a gaze of ice blue) _and patching up planets?_

“Ms. Oswald,” Malcolm Tucker says. “Do you honestly have what it takes to work this fucking job?”

Chaos, it seems, is always an honest vice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic disregards a whole chunk of canon post the DW S8 finale, and Malcolm's timeline is left purposely ambiguous. There's no Nicola Murray, so far, and while that may change, pretty much go with the idea that it's before "Spinners and Losers". I'm going to give Clara and Malcolm some time to connect before I introduce the Doctor, but rest assured, he will appear eventually and shake things up a bit.


	2. fire my imagination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new assistant makes some waves in Number 10. Malcolm's not the only one to notice.
> 
> Or, enter Jamie fucking MacDonald.

_chapter two_

 

Thursday mornings are always fucking wretched. Granted, they aren’t as shit as Mondays, nor are they as fucking left-field as Fridays, but the thing about Thursdays-- they’re close enough to the weekend that people turn into total faffs, and dead into the week enough that the idiots slacking off are smacked right across their drooping cocks by an ocean tide of work. He always gets his fair share of yelling in on Thursdays, which would normally be a light in the brutal intellectual darkness that is Number 10, but today he’s been too fucking busy jogging down the fucking hallways with foam coming out his mouth to bollocks anybody at a half-decent jag. One foot in the door and he’d been slammed with a wage adjustment leak from W&P, and he was off to rip the balls off an idiotic junior advisor before his second cup of coffee. Two hours later and he’s still running around, and the trembling feeling of combined continuous rage and caffeine deprivation is starting to feel less like his familiar steam and more like a pretense to a stroke. Turning a corner like a mad terrier, he’s about to scream out the name of the pissant scuttling away down the hall before he stumbles to a halt, barely avoiding a collision with a small woman in blue.

“Here,” the woman says, as though she’d been waiting for him. Malcolm looks downwards to see the assistant he’d hired yesterday (Fuck, had he-- was that fucking yesterday?) proffering a polystyrene cup brimming with coffee. His mouth _waters_ at the sight, and he takes it from her outstretched hand with desperate reverence.  Steam curls around his nose like a lover as he lifts it to his mouth, and he tries not to groan like he's Ron fucking Jeremy when bitterness burns across his lips.

It’s blacker than sin, just the way he likes it.

Through the hit of caffeine spiking in his brain, he sees his newbie smile with abandon. _What kind of coffee is this? Fucking orgasmic._ “I typed Hartigrand's speech for the Clean Trees Bill, sent it to Enviro’s press officer,” she reports, with a cheeriness that somehow manages professional standing, “and you’ve got a call from, erhm, Sheridan up at the Cabinet office. I managed to keep him back for a few hours until things could simmer, but he’ll be calling back again, undoubtedly. He seems like the persistent type, really.”

Clara Oswald patiently looks up at him as he knocks back a delectably scalding gulp, and he does his best not to think too much before he swallows. He sucks down air, and opens his mouth to speak, but she does a little- a little _bounce_ on her heels, and adds, “Ooh, and it’s the Attorney General’s wife’s birthday, I sent flowers. Lilies, to be specific.”

He blinks at her, and crashes down on Earth. “Right,” he says. He physically attempts to draw down his own eyebrows, and kicks back another swig to help contain himself. “You got into it fast, didn’t you? How the hell did you get Hartigrand’s speech?”

“I try. And it was on my desk, a Mr. Reeder dropped it off around eight.”

“For the love of God, never call that idiot fucking _Mr. Reeder_ again, his ego can't stand to grow any fucking bigger. You get things on your desk already?”

“Yes, actually, I sent a memo first thing this morning- the speech will be ready for the press conference tomorrow, after your review.”

It’s her first day and fuck him if he’s already certain the copy is immaculate. He’s not superstitious but he knows it’s a bad sign-- she’ll probably throw in the fucking towel by the end of the week. “How’d you manage to stall Sheridan?”

“The man likes his stationary, and I was in the middle of writing a birthday card.” She smiles, quite brilliantly for so early on a Thursday morning. It’s...unsettling, but works well with the crisp color of her navy pantsuit and the excited gleam in her eyes. They’re quite brown, those eyes, bright and unnaturally large, so obviously Malcolm stares into them like a twat. “Now, feel free to chase after the man-child who just ran off, but if you want, you can always head to your office instead so I can make him crawl back to you. The second option, though, comes with a fresh cuppa.”

His mouth twitches. She manages to make something like a schoolmarm’s instruction-- something rational and ever more knowledgeable-- sound like a pleasant suggestion, and when normally he’d be ripping the rug out from her and telling her exactly where to roll it up and shove it (to prove a point, of course), he instead finds himself appreciative.

She’s smart enough to infer that he doesn’t take orders. He quite likes that.

On top of that he’s been goddamn running all morning, his fucking feet ache, and he enjoys the visual of Ms. Oswald-- a charming little vision of pantsuit-- drawing the scum of Number 10 near with her pleasant smiles and inflating doe eyes, the new blood flower to his fuckwit flytrap.

His mouth twitches again, getting stuck with one side of his mouth tipped upwards, which means he’s been standing still too long to remember why it’s a bad thing. She looses a lethal set of dimples when he grunts and nods his head, and as they head to his office, she manages to ask him what his favorite tea is, delicately insult Ollie-pricking-Reeder’s pathetic handwriting, and provide him a colorful synonym for ‘crevice’ with a straight face during a round-up phone call to Jamie.

So far, she’s doing a fair job at creating what he might even call his _good_ side.

^ ^ ^

Later, wage calamity dealt with and junior advisor properly castrated, he’s sipping at a piping mug of fresh coffee and looking over the Hartigrand speech. It’s smooth and balanced (so is the fucking coffee, it's fucking sinful), and there’s a few choice words he _knows_ that stupid cunt Reeder didn’t put in that make the address actually sound like something important.

_The English teacher’s a good writer, who’d have fucking guessed it._

When she’d first come in, after a long line of morons ranging from basic tits to full-blown narcissistic cunts, he’d been bordering on homicide. Worse still, boredom. He had been murderously unimpressed all day-- by the ugly ambition and timid quivering of the applicants, by their fear, their lust for career-climbing. While he agreed for some this job was a rung on the long, depraved ladder of British politics, that didn’t mean he had to fucking deal with it. He’d been an arrogant little cock too in his time, he didn’t want to have to put up with shit from idiotic twenty-somethings looking for a foot-up through his front fucking door.

He’d lumped her in as one of the shy ones right off the bat, despite the email he’d received about her just minutes earlier. With more adjectives and action words than fucking sense, U.N.I.T. had formally managed to paint Clara Oswald as the second coming of Margaret Thatcher; she was not supposed to be a short bird in purple with magically enlarging eyes and quick smiles. Her initial hesitance and staring had almost been a disappointment, but she’d emerged immediately as a good liar with the excuse about some friend of hers, his supposed doppelganger or whatever-the-fuck.

He’d started paying attention, at any rate. That she seemed so sincere was a decent sign of talent, if not competence. It was the sadness that’d made it real. She’d looked at him like-- like a fucking _car accident._ Then there was the real kicker: she didn’t know who he was. Who knew meeting someone who didn’t shit their skirts at the sight of him would bring him pleasure instead of challenge? And this time, she hadn’t been lying. Those ridiculous brown eyes had been utterly fucking sincere: she didn’t know or give a fuck who he was, just that he was the boss and the one interviewing her for the job. Like crisp morning air, that was.

She grew a set of balls quickly after he brought up U.N.I.T., especially when he tried to grill her about her the mechanics of her job, so whatever concern he’d had for the state of U.N.I.T.’s consulting practices vanished when she started _smiling,_ calm as you fucking like, as though she’d gained the upper hand. Negotiation and crisis management, holy _fuck_. The London calamities of these past years-- most recently, the walking tin-can debacle of terror-- they had U.N.I.T.’s stealthy little fingerprints all over them. If she’d had _any_ possible hand in their management, she was more than a consultant, she was a fucking gladiator.

Clara Oswin Oswald is impressive, cheerful, and quite possibly a secret chaos spinner for alien invasions. Even better, she’s smart, quick to the game, and she smiles like she’s not in the hellhole of Number 10, or looking at _him,_ when she is _._

It’s suspicious as fuck, and worse, Malcolm likes her alright-- so she’ll never last more than a month.

Two weeks, tops.

“ _Mal,"_ he hears, and in stomps Jamie like a Lincolnshire funeral dirge. Distantly, he hopes his expression is bored enough to warrant overlooking. Jamie can be surgically precise when it comes to dissecting Malcolm’s expressions; it’s what makes him good at his job. He doesn’t ever have to _yell_ at Jamie (though he may, for fuck all’s sake), because Jamie can read foul thoughts from his face like it’s a porn rag.

“Why am I the only one getting calls from Sheridan?” Jamie demands, with lack-luster spit and vehemence. “That twat doesn’t know when to fucking take a knee, I’m about to jog to Whitehall myself to kick his fucking head in. Also, who the fuck is that hot stack of pantsuit out there, and where can I get one?”

“Knowing him, he’ll probably fucking ring in about five minutes, I'll take care of it. And that’s my new personal assistant, Clara- she’s brilliant, I’m fucking keepin’ her.”

He gets the vague impression that the smile on his face might actually be whole-hearted, but Jamie appears to concur. He ignores it.

“She’s _sizzling,_ Mal, in that cute, y’know, professor’s aide sort of way. It’s an office distraction, I demand another to balance the scales. Where the hell did you find her?”

“Your math may be a bit off there, check again in the loo during your mid-morning wank. And I hired her yesterday, fucking get your own.” His mouth settles to a sharp lift at a corner, hinting at a glint of canine, and Jamie plops down in a seat with a belabored grunt. “She was the only applicant in the lot that wasn’t a totally incapable cunt-- she puts a hell of a fucking resume together.”

“A’right, paws off, I get it. Lucky bastard,” Jamie replies, smirk teasing as he props up his feet, and Malcolm resists the overpowering urge to roll his eyes. Unfortunately, it's that kind of thing that eggs the little prick on. “Everybody's fucking talking about her. You how this fucking lot takes to new faces, worse than tabloid rags, they are. Thing is, she's a fucking sweetheart, and it's making people nervous."

"I can't imagine why," Malcolm says dryly.

"Nice people don't belong in Number 10, so to everyone else, she's here because she's a washout or secretly a psychopath." Jamie shrugs his shoulders, oozing sarcasm, and Malcolm frowns at the implication. "Being a decent bird equates to fucking idiocy, apparently. But if you fucking hired her, she's got a few brain cells to rub together. Can't say the same about the cunts gabbing about her." He sighs, put-upon, and Malcolm actually does roll his eyes. Jamie lifts an eyebrow in response. "So she must be doing a decent job of it, if you know her name already. A _very_ decent job if she’s ‘brilliant’, eh? You know, I’ve only heard you say that fucking word twice without sarcasm-- once about the fatarse American president getting in a bike accident, and once about Miles Davis.”

 _For fuck’s sake._ “Jealous, MacDonald?” he snarks, eager to switch the subject before Jamie can sink his teeth into it.

“Fuck no, I’ve got a smoking woman at home,” Jamie throws back, and _damn it,_ that was not what he meant. “But _you_ don’t, do ye?”

Jamie’s accent has thickened, and the vein at Malcolm’s temple throbs warningly as exasperation spirals down his spine. “For the love of God, not this tripe again, Jamie-”

A look Malcolm knows far too fucking well enters Jamie’s eyes, threads of mayhem and psychosis building beneath lightning battalion eyebrows, and he drops his feet to the carpet. He leans forward on his knees and bares his teeth, mouth stretching in a savage, toothy leer.

“You fucking dirty old man,” Jamie says. “You _like_ her.”

Fucking _Christ._ “I’m even not going to fucking dignify that with a-”

“Motherfucking _brilliant,”_ he insists, hissing out the words with freakish pleasure. Malcolm almost gawks at him, eyes narrowing instantly-- angrily, damn it, _angrily--_ and he leans across his desk, eyebrows descending low like the crest of approaching tide.

“You’re a fucking _idiot,_ ” he says, and his voice nearly snaps in half with the effort of keeping it from a shout. Jamie only looks more victorious, and Malcolm’s grip on his coffee-mug goes knuckle white. The image of flinging it across Jamie’s face is brief temptation, kindled greater by the sickeningly eager look festering in his colleague’s eyes.

“I can’t say I blame you, Mal,” he replies, leaning back, and his tone is ocean fucking breezy. Red sparks at the back of Malcolm’s eyes, spit up friction as he grits his teeth. “She’s fucking hot and, apparently, smart enough, _and,”_ Jamie grins, almost salaciously. “You think she’s fucking _brilliant.”_

“She’s a decent _PA,_ ” Malcolm growls back, “and it’s her first fucking day! Tomorrow she could be more useless than Ollie-tubesock-Reeder! It’s not exactly rocket science to be fucking brilliant at typing and making Earl fucking Grey, is it?”

“I think you’re missing a denial somewhere in there, Mal,” Jamie chimes, like the fucking twat-arse he is. “If you like her, stop being a fucking chav and admit it. Is this what you become when you meet attractive women? A numpty teenager? Be a fucking _man,_ Malcolm, have some fucking respect for yourself-- and for your cock, it must be fucking dusty by now.”

“Fuck you,” Malcolm replies promptly, a long finger stabbing in Jamie’s direction like a javelin. The more irritated he gets, the harder Jamie will clamp down; he's a fucking snake that way. But anger swells in his chest like the heating coils of a gas stove, burning away at his resolve to remain composed. “I like her as a fucking employee, you stupid, perverted sack of shit. I've barely exchanged ten fucking words with her. Why the fuck do you attempt to turn every woman you see into my newest fucking sexual conquest? Don't you have a fucking life in between morning wanks and minister scalping?”

“It's because you’re a lonely bastard, Mal, and it’s pathetic, and as your only friend it’s my duty to save you from a withered set of balls. And, if it’s the whole employer-employee thing you’re worried about, fucking forget it. A man sleeping with his PA isn’t exactly first-page news these days. Maybe if you were married and she was a pouf, but you’re both hot and single, so who gives a fuck?”

“It’s her first _fucking day,”_ Malcolm seethes, approaching wit's end, (quietly, quietly) refusing to let any stupid possibility plant itself even in the darker recesses of his mind. “I’m her new _boss,_ I’m _twenty_ fucking _years_ her senior and-”

He realizes his voice is rising, and resists the urge to slam his head on his desk. Jamie watches with relish.

“-And even if I gave a shit, she could be engaged to fucking Richie McCaw for all I know,” he finishes coolly, quick to collect his calm. 

"She's not," Jamie says with the smooth slant of his brow, and Malcolm feels something foreign startle in his gut.

"And how the fuck would you know?"

Jamie smiles. Cunt.

"I know because I  _asked_ her, you thick fucking git. I felt the need to introduce myself this morning, as my stout professionalism would clearly dictate, and we had a lovely conversation about Number 10 and how you like your fucking coffee." He tosses a wink just as Malcolm's jaw starts to harden. "I didn't fucking hit on her, either! I mentioned my Sarah at home, and like conversation naturally fucking progresses, she returned by saying she wasn't seeing anybody. You're already halfway there, Mal, just ask her out for fucking tea or something."

"I think you've got something in your fucking ears, Jamie, I said I'm not fucking interested-"

“I'm not saying you have to shag her _today_ ,” Jamie counters winningly, and Malcolm wants to shove his head through a post. “What I'm saying is that it’s the twenty-first fucking century, experience is the new sexy, and who. _Gives_. A _fuck_?”

“You are fucking mental,” Malcolm says, voice finally leveling and ending the conversation totally. “Get the fuck out of my office and back to work before I shove my phone up your shitter with Sheridan on the line.” His voice snaps taut as Jamie rises to go, his idiotic face smug as though he’s won. “And don’t even fucking _look_ at Clara on your way out, you meddling twat. Stay the fuck out of my personal life from now on, or I swear I’ll dump your useless carcass at the foot of the motherfucking Cabinet Office.”

Jamie raises his hand in lofty surrender, the grin on his face still infuriatingly present. “A’right, a’right, I’ll leave you to it, blue balls and all. 'Sides--” His eyes flash in triumph, and impossibly, his grin grows even wider. "If you didn't before, you're sure as fuck going to think about it now."

"You better start fucking _running,_ Jamie, I swear to fucking God-"

"Have a good one, Mal." He turns on a heel and heads out, chuckling 'fucking brilliant' under his breath like an A-plus prick. Malcolm almost chucks his stapler at him, but instead, his fucking phone rings.

“Yeah?” he answers, per usual, and it’s _not_ fucking Sheridan. His mind slides into business, voice curling cordial as the heat fades from under his collar. “And good _morning_ to you, too, then... Ah, she did, did she? Her favorite flower? Lucky guess, eh? ...Of course, of course, tell her happy birthday for me, then.” He sinks into his chair, cradling the phone at his neck as he crosses his arms and puts up his feet. “Yeah. No problem... That cunt’s been calling you too? What the fuck does he even want? ...Yeah, right. I’ll deal with it. Bye.”

 _Lilies, to be specific._ He drops the phone back in his cradle, feeling a smile tugging unconsciously at his lips. He's lifting her coffee to his mouth-- toes practically fucking _curling_ at the taste-- when the realization slams down on him like a tonne of fucking bricks.

For fuck's sake.  _Brilliant._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jamie's such a brohan. Next chap's from Clara's perspective. 
> 
> Chapter title comes from the Rolling Stones song "I Can't Get No (Satisfaction)": heads up, gonna have a lot of old school lyric/song-titled chapters, because I'm a nerd like that. Also, please tell me if the dialogue is a crash-and-burn, I'm concerned I'm not getting their characters right-- they're so sharp, and it's hard to harness their dynamic.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I was so pleased by the instant response to this story, I'm still thrilled, much love you guys!


	3. future in your hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara starts her first day at Number 10, and to her surprise, things go pretty well.

_chapter three_

 

_You got the job._

Her five thirty alarm clock wakes her with a heart attack of crackling energy. Her eyes fly open, flinging off sleep without hesitation, and focus directly on the yellow post-it she’d planted on its face the night before. _You got the job,_ it reads, with handwriting loopy and juddery with excitement. _So get to work, Oswald._

She dances through her morning routine with giddy fervor. She busts out Stevie Wonder in the shower, slides across the floor in knee highs a’la _Risky Business,_ and even allows herself a squeal of exhilaration as she blow dries her hair.

She’d gotten the _job._

She manages to climb into the outfit she’d picked out the night before without wrinkling it unwearable with her enthusiasm: the deep marine blazer and pants pair well with a silk blouse and basic make-up. She scoops her hair up in an elegant ponytail and elects to wear reasonable black flats, because as much as she loves the boost and pop in her slacks, she has a feeling she’ll be running around all day.

She can’t wait.

 _And it has nothing to do with the fact that my new boss looks like the Doctor’s younger brother_ , she tells herself over orange juice. She half believes it, and when she checks herself one last time in the mirror, it almost clicks where she’s going.

Number 10. Department of Communications. To her new job, for the British  _government._ God, she’d never hear the end of it from her parents-- not after that protest stint she’d had in uni.

She runs to work a good twenty-five minutes early-- not to be too early, or too eager-- and immediately locates her desk (her _desk,_ haha!), across the hall from Malcolm’s office where she’d interviewed yesterday. Setting up her computer with the office communications system, she immediately sends out a departmental memo with relish: spelling out essentially that the position for Malcolm Tucker’s new personal assistant has been filled (yes, yes, thank you very much, she’d like to thank the Academy), he can now be reached through her office line, and that all tasks encompassing her job’s parameters or requiring Malcolm’s review can now be sent to her desk.

In other words, Clara Oswald is now open for business.

Fifteen minutes before work starts and Malcolm Tucker walks through the front door, she sets about to learn her new atmosphere, drifting through the building to absorb its inner workings while introducing herself to the droning trickle of employees coming in for the day. Most of them greet her with distant welcome and handshakes, but some just stare blearily through weekday glaze, like she’s a nosy intern whining about a chore.

“Oh, yeah?” one had asked, a taller bloke (bowl-cut, smarmy face, something to prove) who’d kept sneaking glances at her breasts. “What’d you do to score _that_ interview, set a basket of live kittens on fire?”

She’d blinked at him, said, “Nice to meet you, then,” and quickly walked away. She understands that obviously, people who hate her boss aren’t going to be the best company to keep, but, as the morning progresses, she finds that might rule out a significant number of people. As more prospective colleagues mill into Number 10, she gathers the same universal sentiments-- that a.) she seems "nice?", whatever the hell that means, and that b.) Malcolm Tucker is a heartless psychopath who not only bathes in the blood of his enemies, but “gets hard to the scent of misery and pissed knickers”.

Despite being fully able to reconcile this idea with the foul-mouthed man who’d interviewed her yesterday, she can’t find herself to grow any more apprehensive about her new boss. If anything, that the whole department fears him demonstrates that he’s certainly _capable_ : from what Malcolm had described of his job the day before, he deals with PR incidents that can drive full-grown men to tears. It isn’t as though he can pacify make-or-break governmental drama with spoon-feeding and pretty words, right? He has to be able to control the PM’s public face with an iron fist, or else he’d be out of a job.

“Right,” she tells herself, unflummoxed and nodding over the stirring coffee maker that’d been left at her desk, no doubt a remnant of its previous owner.

“What is?” a voice asks, and she looks up. A man, tall and brunet, leans against the edge of her door, a quiet grin curling the side of his mouth.

“Oh. Hello,” she says by way of answer. She steps aside of her desk and extends a hand.  “Clara Oswald.”

“Jamie MacDonald,” he responds, shaking firmly. His accent is very, very Scottish, and she wonders exactly how many of the employees of Number 10 are actually English. “You’re new.”

“I am,” she agrees. “I was hired yesterday for the PA job. First day.” She smiles, carefully, because she knows that she’s a bit too excited to smile with full wattage.

“You’re Mal’s new paper pusher, then?” he asks, lifting a brow of amusement. He says it more as a statement of fact than as an insult, so Clara crosses her arms against the knot of pride prickling in her gut.

“Yep,” she says. _Mal._ The nickname had been said with familiarity, rather than distaste. In fact, it’s the first time she’s heard her new boss referred to with anything other than (bare minimum) veiled discomfort. Perhaps this is the only human in Number 10 whom she could professionally befriend. She opens her mouth to ask a tentative question, but the steady beep of the coffee maker cuts her off.

“Coffee?” she asks instead, and grins when the response is, “No need to twist my arm, sweetheart, fucking please.” Oh, yes, it’s quite possible Jamie and Malcolm are the sweary Scottish duo of Downing.

She pours and hands him a cheap white mug, and even though his face is conversationally placid, his brown eyes are intuitive and studious. When they catch the smile on her face, they seem almost pleased.

“So what do you think of him, then? The ‘Dark Lord of Downing Street’.” Jamie snorts, long fingers curling around the mug handle. “I know he interviewed you himself, or you wouldn’t be here.”

She chuckles, and again, Jamie seems to take it as a personal compliment. “He...well, to be honest, it’s my first day, he hasn’t walked in the door yet, and I’m already sure he’s the hardest working boss I’ve ever had.”

“Nail on the fucking head, love,” Jamie says, knocking back his mug like a shot of whiskey.

“And,” she adds, gaze flashing with observance. “That’s why everybody hates him.”

Dark brows shoot up over a lip of white ceramic, and Jamie’s footballer shoulders straighten. It’s what Clara had hoped to see. “You think so, eh?”

“Pretty sure.” She shrugs with measured breeze. “They hate him because he intimidates them into doing their jobs. He doesn’t take mistakes with grace, and he never lets people forget about them. He doesn’t forgive, and he doesn’t hold back.”

As she speaks, her heart seems to spin and sink in her chest. Her words seem meant for someone else, and they ache coming out because before, they wouldn’t have. They would have felt like shared strength and pride, heroism and last second turned-tables and running from danger. Not- not like yawning across her ribcage, tugging at skin not yet healed.

“He’s very good at his job,” she finishes, before her voice can empty out all over the floor. “So people hate him.”

Jamie stares at her, that bright keenness flooding over his cocksure smirk. “So you aren’t worried, then? About facing that storm yourself?”

“If I do my job right, I won’t have to be,” she responds. “And if I don’t, then I’ll deserve what’s coming to me. He’s Director for a reason, yeah?”

“Ooh,” Jamie says, seriousness blossoming into a mischief she’d learnt to be weary of as a teacher. “He’s picked a good one in you, hasn’t he?” His eyes crinkle, distinctively school-boyish, like the principal’s just sat on the tack. Normally she’d be uneasy, with types like him-- he’s a potty-mouthed flirt, no mistake-- but she has the feeling he’s going to make life a little livelier while she’s here.

“I think so,” she volleys, winking.

“Cheeky, I like it. God, you and my Sarah would get on like a house on fucking fire,” he says, grinning broadly, and oh, he _is_ good. Building a bridge, flirting, and taking real possible romantic interest off the table in one go, she _quite_ approves. Her smile grows even wider, and she feels the cutthroat office world around her grow a little warmer.

“If I wanted a boyfriend, I’m sure the two of you would get on smashingly,” she throws back, returning the favor, and Jamie looks thrilled. “Tell Sarah if she wants some girl time, we can have a night out, burn down a few buildings.” She's having fun, and God, it’s been a terribly long time since she’s done that. Pretty soon she and her new colleague are strolling down the hallways, chatting about the other employees of Number 10, current events, and most importantly, about her new boss.

“His coffee? Darker than fucking Antarctica in July, love, if there’s a hint of sugar in it he’ll toss it out the fucking window.”

“Black as night, got it,” she repeats, filing that in her memory. “And what time does he usually get in?”

“If he doesn’t sleep passed out on his desk,” Jamie says, lifting a wrist to check the time, “I’d say right around-”

“ _WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?”_

“Now, actually,” Jamie says, chuckling, and Clara claps her hand over her place where her heart had leapt in its cage. Around her, every soul in the office has sank into themselves like deflated souffles, and as she watches, a few people even hurry away, like they hear the train whistling and they’re standing on the tracks.

“ _THAT LITTLE PISS COCK!”_ she hears, the voice rattling across dull white walls. _It_ is _a bit foreboding_ , she allows, and finds something utterly ridiculous buzz beneath her skin, anticipation humming in her fingertips. Malcolm Tucker's voice is not so unlike an explosion, a zap, an alien screech to send her feet flying beneath her-- it's a rallying call to arms, a shot of adrenaline, and it makes her feel-- familiarly, bizarrely-- like doing something fun, and possibly important, like rescue her country from ruin (or save the human race).

“ _WHERE THE FUCK IS HE, I’LL MAKE A FUCKING PROTEIN SHAKE OUT OF HIS FUCKING BALLS-”_

“You better start making that fucking coffee now, while you can catch him,” Jamie says offhandedly. He lazily draws out his phone, finger scrolling through messages, and whistles lowly. “Fuck, the new wage bill. Oh, yeah. He’s gonna be going fucking one hundred and twenty all morning. And I do mean you’ll have to fucking _catch_ him, the man’s exercise routine is fucking running through the building like it’s on-goddamn-fire.”

Clara stares at him, and almost starts to laugh, because _of course_ he does. She sees a flash of suit and violent gesture through a doorway, and has a sudden urge to follow it: trail it towards doom and the inevitable _doing_ of important things.

“ _JAMIE! Jamie, fucking get me Stevenson, I’ll be fucked before this runs through the fucking_ Mail!”

“The master beckons,” Jamie says, bowing, and Clara giggles as he jogs off. Then she tears her eyes away and scampers off to her office to research all the news on the newest wage bill for W&P, swapping out the crap dollar store grounds in the machine for a dark Italian roast she’d brought from home-- saved for the most dire of Monday mornings. The day has only just officially started, but the electricity under her skin feels like coming home and running away and she thinks, maybe, it'll be a good day. 

Then her office phone rings for the first time, and she acquiesces the point: it'll be _interesting_ , at least.

 

^^^

 

She catches glimpses of her new boss only twice before ten that morning, as mere blurs of grey and colorful shouting darting through the hallways. This is partly because she spends a few hours revising a speech for the Environmental minister (Make-Our-Earth-Grand-Again Minister Blythe Hartigrand) which had been dropped off early by Bowl-Cut (an Oliver-call-me-Ollie Reeder) for Malcolm’s eventual review. She spends longer on it than she would have normally-- after all, she graded papers for a living not too long ago-- mostly out of perfectionism, intent on making her first assignment tip-top, keenly aware that it’s a speech that a head of her government will officially read aloud in an address.

_God, who knew editing speeches could be exciting?_

She finishes it off and sends it to Mr. Tucker’s inbox, all the while writing a birthday card for the Attorney General’s wife (thank God for Twitter) and herding off a very insistent, sweaty-sounding Mr. Sheridan from the Cabinet Office, who struggles with the concepts of ‘busy’ and ‘available later’. It isn’t until his third panicky call that she decides to bite the bullet and inform Malcolm that the man simply won’t take ‘as soon as possible’ for an answer, but she decides to take a fresh cup with her to soften the blow. Her first confrontation with her new boss can’t be all bad news, after all.

Thank God she doesn’t spill it when he rounds the corner, but he isn’t exactly a creature of stealth roaring down the hallways.

“Here,” she says while she has the guts, and her pulse is already a hummingbird in her ears, foolish and excited-- stupid, stupid-- to see a face she already knows intimately, in all of its planes and edges. She sees those preposterous eyebrows first-- now ashy brown instead of sharp silver-- lifted high with surprise, and almost grins when that slim tower form stutters and sways to a halt. She idly notes next the cool paleness of his cheeks, despite the vigor and volume of his crusade through the building, and she wonders just how fit a man could be, to keep back a flush after two hours of bellowing and running.

Frost blue eyes look downward, downward, skipping her face and falling to the steaming cup in her hand; his mouth falls open, just barely, and he practically snatches it from her fingers. She does her best not to stare as she lifts it to his mouth, eyelids almost fluttering as he takes a first draw, and immediately, lines of stress and fervor seem to lift from his body, the manic locomotive energy falling from his frame like a curtain. Steam mists before now half-lidded eyes, and she thanks the stars and God above for dark Italian roasts.

 _Whoa, girl. Get ahold of yourself, Oswald_.

“I typed up Hartigrand’s speech for the Clean Trees Bill, sent it to Enviro’s press officer,” she says, before he can notice the way she’s staring at him. “And you’ve got a call from, erhm, Sheridan up at the Cabinet office. I managed to keep him back for a few hours until things could simmer, but he’ll be calling back again, undoubtedly. He seems like the persistent type, really.”

Malcolm Tucker takes another quick sip of coffee, gaze distant and inattentive. The angry angles of his body have winded down to near repose, like frothing rage had been a stimulant that had reached its end once he stood still. As he opens his mouth to respond, visibly calmer, she hastens to add, “Ooh, and it’s the Attorney General’s wife’s birthday, I sent flowers.” She smiles, a little proud of herself, but not brightly enough to ask for praise. She’s an adult, thank you, she doesn’t need a gold star.  “Lilies, to be specific.”

Blue crystallizes, going sharp with focus and leveling downward, directly at her. He blinks off the daze and transforms again, this time into the man who interviewed her yesterday. Cutting brow, intensive gaze tightly reined.

“Right,” he says, voice unexpectedly level. Another knock back of coffee. “You got into it fast, didn’t you? How the hell did you get Hartigrand’s speech?”

He doesn’t sound angry, or any measure more irritated, so she thinks it’s going pretty well.

“I try. And it was on my desk, a Mr. Reeder dropped it off around eight.”

He rolls his eyes heavenwards, nauseated, but keeps a dry wit. “For the love of God, never call that idiot fucking 'Mr. Reeder' again, his ego can't stand to grow any fucking bigger. You get things on your desk already?”

She almost laughs, because if please-call-me-Ollie is anything from what she’s seen so far, it’s pretentious. “Yes, actually, I sent a memo first thing this morning- the speech will be ready for the press conference tomorrow, after your review.”

His brow rises, and his nonchalance wavers to something like curiosity.  “How’d you manage to stall Sheridan?”

“The man likes his stationary,” she recounts, smiling readily, “and I was in the middle of writing a birthday card.”

He stares down at her, gaze pointed, but far from stinging. Instead, he looks vaguely amused. Her thoughts seem to scatter before she draws them to assembly, dragging her mind around like a butterfly net, and she remembers what she’s interrupting.

_Right. Idiot hunting._

Choosing her next words carefully, her tone travels light and unassertive. “Now, feel free to chase after the man-child who just ran off, but if you want, you can always head to your office instead so I can make him crawl back to you. The second option, though, comes with a fresh cuppa.”

Malcolm's gaze goes shrewd, calculating-- considering. Steel seems to work itself back into his limbs, winding up his spine and flashing through his gaze, and for a moment she sees the spin doctor everyone else sees, a boss of cold blood. She prepares herself for dismissal, refusal, verbal throat-punching, only to nearly sigh relieved when his mouth curves into something crooked and easy.

His smile is nothing like the Doctor’s smile. Those grins had been wild, headlong, the impetuous barings of teeth-- saved for enemies and adventure and sometimes, sometimes just for her. Malcolm smiles like he’s in control and letting something slip, accidentally on purpose, and in sight of it something she'd been calling novelty fades from Clara's mind.

Malcolm smiles very differently than the Doctor, because he is not the Doctor. He's a man, a human, very not alien-- he's her new terrifying boss, and he likes his coffee dark, and he runs and yells and swears like a country mum, and suddenly, Clara sees Malcolm Tucker, not the man who looks like her best friend.

Before her, Malcolm grunts in assent, and the memory of his smile still lingers in his eyes, quiet warmth. She sees it, beams, and decides that she rather likes him anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from the song "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)" by Stevie Wonder, because my headcanon involves Clara liking 70s music. Thank you guys so much for all the lovely comments-- I really was (am) nervous about my characterizations, but you have all been terribly lovely. xxx


	4. pretty woman, walk my way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm realizes how screwed he really is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So since I last updated this story I graduated high school, started university, moved thousands of miles away from home, wrote dozens of unpublished stories, watched countless new shows and movies, and experienced all the ups and downs of college and family life.
> 
> I know it's been a long time but life sometimes gets in the way - sometimes my inspiration changes (I'm drowning in the witcher 3 feels rn) but I thought, hey, wth, why not publish something from a while ago? Thx for sticking with me, folks.

_chapter four_

 

“Have you asked her out yet?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Malcolm replies absently, scrawling at his notepad hard enough to make the pencil imbed itself into the paper. The television is turned up loud enough to ingratiate with his thoughts, so words spill manically across the pad like demented doctor’s script.

“No, then. How’s our boy doing?”

“Piss poorly, but the interviewer seems charmed enough. It’s the fucking German shepard eyes, they gloss over the fountains of shit coming out of his mouth. He even got her fucking name wrong, the fucking idiot.” Malcolm sighs as the camera pans back from the PM’s stupidly placid face, signalling the end of the programme, and he tosses the pad across his desk.

“Fucking finally. If Sandra McPherson wasn’t a total moron, we’d be bare-arsed and rosy for tomorrow’s _Mail._ Thank God for small fucking blessings.”

“Are you going the fuck home, then? There’s this thing called sleep, Mal, you can’t shag the new girl if you fall asleep on her halfway through.”

“Whatever patience I had for this bullshit has reached the end of its pitiful lifespan, Jamie, fucking leave it already.”

“Alright, alright,” he says, backing off far too easily, and Malcolm squints suspiciously into the dim lamplight of his office. “Get the fuck home already, say goodnight to Clara for me.”

Malcolm’s voice levels at reanimated corpse. “What?”

“Well, last I spoke to her, she was still working in her office. ‘Can’t go home to ‘til the boss goes home’, I believe she said.” Jamie’s voice curls shamelessly with glee. “We text, fucking love her. Count some sheep, Mal!”

“For the love of-” Jamie hangs up, and Malcolm stares at his mobile like it’s his ex’s Netflix queue. He buries his brow into the heel of his palm. “Damn it.” He sighs again, heavily this time, and looks up to glare at his office door.

For fuck’s sake. He’s not exactly going to take the fucking emergency exit, is he?

Growling curses under his breath, he slams his laptop closed and turns off the telly, flicking off the light as he moves out the door. He pauses on the shit grey carpet, grimacing at the tell-tale lamplight at the end of the hall. Of-fucking-course, she’s still bloody working, long after everybody’s gone, the psychotically good employee that she is. He’d been keeping limited (highly professional) contact with her since the Sheridan Incident of 2014, trust Jamie to cock it all up.

He grips his briefcase hard enough to make his knuckles ache, and it pisses him off more to stand idiotically in the hallway, mind scrounging for ways to leave the building without her notice.

God. She’s a fucking secretary, not a taxman. Since when has he decided to be rude, as well as evasive? If she’s waiting for him to shove off home, it’d be more than a fucking ‘dick move’ to disappear without warning.

_Could you be any less of a fucking man? Fucking get on with it._

Breath whistling sharply through his teeth, he starts down the hallway with painful nonchalance. Halting in the small office doorway, he raises a fist to knock his knuckles against the doorframe only to hesitate.

Her fingers are at her temple, one nail carding through the scooped-back curtain of her hair with another resting at the crest of her cheekbone, and her brown eyes glow in a blue pane of light reflecting from her PC screen. Her lips are curled upwards, mirth dimpling her cheek, and her smile is a bizarre, luminous juxtaposition from the drab darkness of her office. She taps at her computer with a free hand, something like a giggle vibrating through her small shoulders, and it’s in the middle of that laugh-- the peak of her smile, the crinkle of her tiny nose-- that she looks up, eyes meeting his.

_Christ. Jamie MacFuckingDonald, I hope you drown in your own fucking toilet tonight._

“I can’t believe he got her name wrong,” she says, her voice bubbling out in a laugh. She turns the laptop round to show him a Youtube video- because of course, there’s already twenty of them out there made by imbecile kids still weaning off their mother’s teats-- and her amusement seems to radiate towards him in ridiculous radioactive pulses. The video she presents is a delightful loop of the PM mangling McPherson’s last name to the soundtrack of obnoxious air horns, brought to you by “xXxtheReelDeadp00lxXx”, and God, doesn’t he hate the fucking Internet.

“I can. Sorry to break it to you, but the man you voted for is a fucking idiot.”

His voice just manages its typical acid, and he purposely leans against the door frame, shoulders tense under their veil of repose.

“Who said I voted for him?” she replies, smiling at him in obvious tease, and whatever resilience he’d deluded himself into retaining dissolves. Christ take him if she’s cute, smart, _and_ cheeky. Somewhere in Tartarus, God, Satan, Jamie, and his mother are all fucking laughing at him.

“No? You were a teacher then, you probably voted fucking Independent. How _liberal._ ” It appears mocking deadpan is a good a fallback as always, but when she lifts an eyebrow in challenge despite the pink airbrushing her cheekbones, he realizes he can’t exactly fall upon deadpan ‘staring like a twat’.

“You’re probably waiting for me to ask who you voted for. How _typical_.”

 _Fuck._ Titillating banter is _not_ fucking allowed, this is exactly what he was avoiding.

She smirks, eyes glittering like she’s actually enjoying herself. “Knowing you, you probably were too busy keeping the booths from exploding to actually vote,” she continues, still in jest. “Somehow I feel you’re not the type to praise the patriotic importance of the individual vote, anyway.”

“You’re right, I don’t, but of course I fucking voted, what kind of moron do I look like?”

She manages to giggle, blush, and smile in graceful sequence without breaking a sweat, and those thrice-damned dimples wink at him mercilessly throughout. How this girl is single and not living it up in Buckingham Palace fucking _boggles_ him, she’s got a natural sunshine holy enough to pledge fealty to.

“So, what the hell are you doing here so late?” he asks, realizing too late that the words pass through a sloppy smile of his own. “If you’re looking for overtime, you’re in the wrong system of government-- if working over hours brought decent pay I’d’ve fucking retired to Jamaica by now.”

Clara’s lips tip up, smile softening into something gentler, and _mein_ fucking _Gott,_ the Pope himself would break chastity over this bird.

“I was just typing up some statements about the interview, some comments for tomorrow to help field the press with- I figured it’d be a good idea to prep in advance while watching the interview live, in case anything went....er...”

“Utterly tits up?” Malcolm suggests dryly, and she visibly bites down on a snicker. He’s impressed with her initiative, because he’d done the exact same thing _knowing_ a cock-up was inevitable, but even more so, the fact that she isn’t sucking up by admitting she was waiting up for him is just fucking brownie points. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck you Jamie fucking MacDonald, fuck your entire imbecilic family and your fucking backwater Lincolnshire heritage for perpetuating your worthless meddling cocksucker genes--_

“Something like that,” she says, oblivious to his frothing internal tirade. She rises and closes her laptop, sliding it into a messenger back from behind her seat and hooking it over a shoulder. “But I’m all finished up now, I only just tripped over that video when I sent it to your inbox.” She reaches forward and flicks off her desk lamp, throwing her office into darkness, and Malcolm can’t help but stare at the curved silhouette her body makes in dark, her tight pantsuit concealing nothing, hinting at everything, even in the absence of light. She moves towards the door, smiling at him as he manages not to throw himself out of her way (away from that shadowed, voluptuous form), and soon they’re standing side-by-side in the hallway as she closes her office door.

It’s fucking embarrassing, how quickly it’s come to this: eyeing her up in the dim afterhours light like some dirty old caricature from the fifties, where old men chased cute skirts and called their secretaries “doll” through smoke-yellowed teeth. This is Downing, not the set of fucking _Mad Men,_ what the hell does he think he’s doing, ogling the best assistant he’s ever had? God, he’ll be blessed by the fucking _stars_ if she quits from simple over-exertion instead of throttling him dry with a drawn-out sexual harassment suit.

She doesn’t start up any small-talk as they head together towards the exit, and with his thoughts as muddled (pathetic) as they are, he appreciates it. Struggling to get himself back in order, he wonders how he managed to hire someone who can unreel him so easily, without even trying-- what sort of cosmic fucking joke this was, to end up with a woman like Clara Oswald, who seemed just right for the job of ruining him.

He considers the worst case scenario, as he is conditioned to do. She could end him without a thought or inclination had she the chance, and it would be the worst comeuppance the universe could serve up for him-- his own destruction, wrought by the pitiful idiocy of his own cock. Fueled by hormones he’d spent most of his adult life repressing for the sake of his job, in his own powerhouse he would be undone, half-hard and gagging after some young thing like a dog in fucking heat.

Picture perfect finale for the desperate memoirs he’ll write when he’s broke and suicidal on the streets, dragging on as tabloid media fodder after the disintegration of his career. All thanks to Clara Oswald, the bird with the sunshine smile, who led him round the bend with her cheeky coffee deliveries and masterful speech writing skills and fantastically broad diction.

And all thanks to Jamie fucking MacDonald.

_I’m going to set his fucking dog on fire._

“Alright, then?” Clara asks him, and bloody hell, because looking at her, he suddenly _is._

“What?”

Clara has been quietly observing him, obviously, the entire walk to the exit. Christ, he’s losing his edge, all because of some fucking dimples and some half-arsed banter. She blinks at him, not in hesitation but in consideration, and says, “You just, uh...I dunno, look prime for what looks like homicide, I suppose. Bit late for murder, but who is it you have in mind?”

_My cunt of a matchmaker._

“Nobody in particular,” he lies, grinning, and he can feel the animalistic undercurrent leer from beneath his smile. He expects her to fall silent in face of it, like most do, but instead she meets his eyes, gaze inquisitive.

“Oh, really? It’s not quite ten yet, if you need some help burying bodies, I’m good for another hour or two.” Her voice is amused rather than pressing, and Malcolm is torn between closing the space between them and jumping down the nearest elevator shaft. Leave it to her to be interested in the dirty dealings of his agenda rather than weary of them, and bloody leave it to her to be so inadvertently (enticingly) bold in the process.

“Not tonight,” he says quickly, before he can try to take her up on those spare couple of hours, but adds-- like any fucking warm-blooded man would-- “But raincheck, eh, darlin? Rate this season’s going, the Thames is going to have a few floaters by winter, just ask Sandra McfuckingPherson.”

Clara laughs, more full-bodied this time, and it makes her whole frame shiver. He tracks every vibration with his eyes like a fucking psychopath, and even has the stones to feel pleased with himself. And he used a fucking engendered _pet name,_ he is a godless, randy piece of shit. He swallows hard and pushes the glass door before them open for her, propping it back for her to walk through like a real fucking gentleman while hiding his expression in the motion.

“Oh, Sandra, you mean Sally?”

“Aw, fuck, that was a hard bitch going down, wasn’t it? Idiot couldn’t even remember the twat’s fucking name, and her empty fucking face was on the piece of shit mug he was holding, for fuck’s sake--”

Clara laughs harder, stumbling a bit from the force of it as she walked through the entrance, and he grins wildly right after her, high with the sound and soaring on the knowledge he had caused it.

“Oh my God, and she didn’t even notice, I swear I even heard the cameraman laugh-” Clara chokes out, clutching her diaphragm, and her cheeks are rosy red from lack of oxygen.

Malcolm just stares at her, and keeps staring after he walks her towards the nearest Tube station-- waving goodbye to him, damnable smile bright in the draining streetlight-- staring like the biggest tit in all of London.

He’s a fool. He can’t even remember the last time he laughed with a woman, let alone walked one to the Tube voluntarily. But hell if he doesn’t feel happier around her that he’s felt in months, maybe years.

  
He’s ruined. And it’s all Clara Oswald’s bloody fault, and he’s worried he might just fancy her for that, too.


End file.
